Does anyone know of a ready made framework that exists for this purpose?

I am looking at putting together an online form for this purpose and would rather not have to do it from scratch (and learning ASP will take quite some time for me as I hate and am terrible at coding)

Basically, I'm looking for a form that saves everything to a central SQL database. Once the user has filled out the form, if it's a request that requires manager approval, it's emailed to the appropriate manager. The email is a HTML email with three buttons in it underneath the request:

Approve

Deny

More information required

Clicking approved makes the request be put into an email (or any appropriate form) that is emailed to the Service Desk for actioning.

Deny and More Information required simply reply back to the requestor.

Some sort of web interface would be good for viewing your submitted requests so that you can edit it if it's denied or needs more information.

I'm trying to do this to stop getting request forms for hardware with no cost centres (do they expect IT to pay for this?), user request forms without any details except the persons name (when do they start? Are they a contractor? Do they get an email address?) etc etc

This stuff happens because the current forms are pathetic and confusing, so in my mind I would design the forms to only require the appropriate input for the request (it won't ask for the users start date if it's a user termination).

If there is a Spiceworks module that does this I could settle for that too, though prefer to keep this out of Spiceworks as the call centre that actions this stuff does not have and won't be given access to our Spiceworks install.

7 Replies

I don't know of anything that is this automatic, but you could have all your helpdesk tickets in Spiceworks sent to one (or two) and have them assign the tickets or forward them to the appropriate managers if necessary, and when the manager approves the purchase, assign the ticket to a support tech.

This would not be useful because the point of the form is to handhold the user filling it out and FORCE them to give us the information we need to do the job.

Before anyone says "Oh god you're one of those dictator admins" I'm not, there's no wiggle room here, I cannot create accounts without all the appropriate information. It is absolutely VERY inappropriate for us to do so in our situation.

This means that sure, users might be annoyed they have to fill out this form, but it's that or they are annoyed that we call them and ask them all these questions anyway and then tell them it's going to take longer to do because of it.

Edit: Also I will look into Sharepoint but having used it in the past I know it would be a clunky solution, in addition to not really fitting into our environment.

I have setup Web Help Desk for a couple clients of mine and it would handle what you have asked for quite well. You would need to create a simple web form that generates an email to the help desk software though. You could create it in any basic web editor and upload it to an internal web server.

The email will automatically create a ticket in Web Help Desk. You can setup rules to automatically assign and notify someone to either approve or reject the request. That person can then re-assign the request to someone else who will actually complete it.

The software can automatically escalate based on age, and everything is tracked and logged.

Their pricing is pretty good, and it will run on most servers as long as you have full control of the server. When you set it up, it installs a very basic Java Tomcat server that listens on it's own port.

I have setup Web Help Desk for a couple clients of mine and it would handle what you have asked for quite well. You would need to create a simple web form that generates an email to the help desk software though. You could create it in any basic web editor and upload it to an internal web server.

The email will automatically create a ticket in Web Help Desk. You can setup rules to automatically assign and notify someone to either approve or reject the request. That person can then re-assign the request to someone else who will actually complete it.

The software can automatically escalate based on age, and everything is tracked and logged.

Their pricing is pretty good, and it will run on most servers as long as you have full control of the server. When you set it up, it installs a very basic Java Tomcat server that listens on it's own port.

I second, third, etc. etc. anny motion to build this sort of form building into Spiceworks. It belongs there and not in Sharepoint in my opinion.

I'll be looking to tweak the helpdesk to do just this fairly soon. I also agree with the original poster's point of view. It's not only very important info, but it's an area where we don't want to make assumptions and require accountability.

Yea, this is a big thing for us too.. We currently have a Intranet Help Desk and Software/Hardware request that I built but we've gotten too big to keep using it..

I love how you can add purchases on tickets but I don't like how there isn't separate forms to do so..

It would be easy, I would think, to just give the ability to create them in the portal and create custom attributes to use.. Then, just have them go into a separate table but have pretty much the same functionality that the helpdesk page has..

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